Jamila Gavin is the winner of the 2025 Nero Book Awards, children’s fiction category, with her novel My Soul, A Shining Tree (Farshore). She receives £5,000 and is now in the running for the Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year 2025 alongside the other category winners Benjamin Wood (Adult Fiction), Claire Lynch (Debut Fiction) […]
The shortlist for the 2026 Inclusive Books for Children (IBC) Awards has been announced. The IBC Awards celebrate UK-published inclusive children’s books for 1- to 9-year-olds and the shortlist recognises 25 authors and illustrators who excel in inclusive storytelling. This year’s shortlist selections follow. Baby and toddler book shortlist: Ada, Go, Go, Go! […]
Bookmark Reading Charity has launched Mind The Gap, a national campaign calling for urgent action to close England’s ‘literacy gap’ – the discrepancy in reading attainment between disadvantaged children and their peers. Only 10% of disadvantaged children who fall behind in reading at primary school go on to pass English and maths at GCSE (Education […]
Inclusive Books for Children (IBC) has announced the longlist for its 2026 Awards, recognising outstanding inclusive books for young readers, published in the UK. The annual awards celebrate excellence in storytelling and representation across three categories: baby and toddler books (ages one to three), picture books (ages three to seven) and children’s fiction (ages five […]
At a special ceremony at London’s Southbank Centre, author, actor and presenter Stephen Mangan has announced the winners of the 2025 Laugh Out Loud Awards aka The Lollies. The Lollies is the UK’s biggest celebration of funny books and one of the few awards where the winners are voted for by children. The audience at […]
‘Beautifully transformative books’ recognised in the School Library Association’s annual celebration of information books. Inside Story: How the News Works by Jane Marlow and Terri Po (Templar Books) has beennamed Overall Winner of the 2025 Information Book Awards, sponsored by Hachette Children’sBooks and supported by Peters. Rashmi Sirdeshpande and Jason Lyon took home the Children’s […]
The category shortlists for the 2025 Nero Book Awards have been announced, including the Children’s Fiction shortlist. From hundreds of submissions, this year’s Children’s Fiction judges, author Sharna Jackson, The Telegraph children’s literary critic and author Emily Bearn and Waterstones Children’s Campaign Manager Nick Campbell, have chosen four to shortlist. They are: My Soul, A […]
The shortlist for the 2025 Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize has been revealed: six books that represent the best of the year’s science books for under 14s. The shortlisted books for the Young People’s Book Prize 2025 are (in alphabetical order): Green: The Story of Plant Life on Our Planet by […]
The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) has released its annual Reflecting Realities Survey of Ethnic Representation within UK Children’s Literature. The core aim of Reflecting Realities Survey is to determine the extent and quality of representation of racially minoritised characters featured within picture books, fiction and non-fiction for ages 3-11 published in the […]
Inclusive Books for Children (IBC) has announced that the following experts will form the judging panel for their 2026 awards: Pragya Agarwal, writer and academic; Scott Evans, primary school teacher and creator of The Reader Teacher website; Mei Matsuoka, children’s illustrator and author; Phyllis Ramage, librarian and children’s literature academic; and Nina Tame, disability consultant […]
Congratulations to Julie Broadbent of Northampton International Academy, winner of the 2025 Secondary School Librarian of the Year Award. Julie has won for her work creating a culture of positivity at Northampton International Academy, where reading is celebrated. Open every day, including during social times, Julie has developed the school library into a welcoming safe space, […]
Submissions open today for the Klaus Flugge Prize 2026. Publishers have until 14 January 2026 to submit for the £5,000 prize which is awarded to the most promising and exciting newcomer to children’s picture book illustration. The 2026 judges are 2025 Klaus Flugge Prize winner Emma Farrarons; award-winning and hugely popular illustrator Rob Biddulph; Shelley […]
Nominations have been announced for the 2026 Carnegies, the UK’s longest-running children’s book awards. This year sees 125 nominations in total. 62 books are in contention for the Carnegie Medal for Writing, which is awarded to a book written in English for children and young people that sparks an outstanding reading experience, and 65 books […]
The IBBY UK committee has revealed the books chosen as the UK Honour Books for the 2026 list. The IBBY Honour List is a biennialselection of outstanding, recently published books, honouring writers, illustrators and translators from IBBY member countries For the first time, IBBY UK is nominating books in Welsh alongside books in English. Writing […]
The Booker Prize Foundation has announced that a Children’s Booker Prize will launch in 2026, with the first winner announced in February 2027. The Children’s Booker Prize will be supported by AKO Foundation and is the first major new prize from the Foundation in two decades, since the launch of the International Booker Prize in […]
The National Literacy Trust, in partnership with the Department for Education, has announced ‘Go All In‘ as the message for the National Year of Reading 2026, its campaign to ‘reignite a nationwide passion for reading’. The campaign is built on the belief that the decline in reading and reading enjoyment is largely due to loss […]
The winners of The HarperCollins Reading for Pleasure Awards 2025, in association with the Open University and the UK Literacy Association (UKLA), have been announced. Now in their ninth year, the awards recognise and celebrate teachers and educators who are putting Reading for Pleasure at the heart of their practice in creative and innovative ways, […]
New research by Oxford University Press (OUP) into AI in our classrooms reveals the extent to which young people are using Artificial Intelligence in their schoolwork. The report also examines their attitudes to it. For Teaching the AI-Native Generation, OUP surveyed 2,000 students aged 13–18 across the UK. It finds that 8 in 10 young […]
Launched in 1980, we’ve reviewed hundreds of new children’s books each year and published articles on every aspect of writing for children.
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